Research Collections

In addition to its fine art collections, the California Museum of Photography holds extensive archival collections including the Keystone-Mast Collection, which is comprised of over 250,000 original stereoscopic negatives and 100,000 photographic prints. The original glass and film negatives form a vital primary record of worldwide social, cultural, industrial, agricultural historicity between 1860 and 1950. Several negative archives include 7,000 by Ansel Adams from the Sweeney/Rubin Ansel Adams Fiat Lux Collection, 500 architectural photographs by Robert Cleveland, and 15,000 negatives by Los Angeles photographer, teacher and critic Will Connell.

A.C. Vroman (United States, 1856-1916) was based in Pasadena, California, and extensively documented Southwestern Native American people and cultures in the 1890s and early 1900s. The California Museum of Photography's Vroman photographs are largely later contact prints made in the 1960s from Vroman's negatives.

This collection is comprised of 153 Polaroid and gelatin silver (black & white) photographs made by Andy Warhol. They were donated to the CMP in 2008 by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts as part of their Photographic Legacy Project. Subjects photographed include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver, Jack Nicklaus, Jane Fonda, and Ronald Reagan, as well as several unidentified people likely photographed in anticipation of a portrait commission.

In March of 1963, Ansel Adams (United States, 1902-1984) and the American photo critic, Nancy Newhall, accepted a commission from the President of the University of California, Clark Kerr, to produce a book that would become a visual document of the entire UC system. The project would commemorate the Centennial Celebration of the University. Four years later, after traveling to the nine UC campuses and UC’s myriad research stations, observatories, natural reserves and agricultural extensions, Fiat Lux: The University of California (McGraw Hill Book Company, 1967) was published.

All the negatives in The Sweeney/Rubin Ansel Adams Fiat Lux Collection are archived at the California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside. The collection contains 1,761 negatives from the project including negatives in the black and white film formats: 8"x10", 5"x7", 4"x5", 3"x4", 120, and 35mm.

Dr. Joseph Armstrong Baird (United States, 1922-1992) was a professor of art history at the University of California, Davis and a voracious collector of photography and fine art. After Dr. Baird's death, a large collection of historical architectural photographs (albumen prints, stereographs, and albums) was donated to the California Museum of Photography, of which a small selection has been digitized here.

Giacomo Brogi (1822-1881) and his son Carlo Brogi (1850-1925) were prolific Italian photographers known for their architectural views of Italy. The photographs were frequently published as "Edizioni Brogi," without credit given to the individual photographer.

Megalethoscope slides are albumen prints that have been incised, pricked with pins, and back-painted. When lit from the front, the image appears as a typical albumen print, but when lit from behind the image looks colored and illuminated. These photographs were made for a megalethoscope, also called a day-and-night viewer due to the effect of the images. Megalethoscopes were a source of parlor entertainment, as its operator would shift the lighting source through opening and closing a series of chambers on the device. Carlo Ponti, an Italian photographer, invented the megalethoscope, and is believed to be the creator of these photographs. The CMP has a collection of over 150 megalethoscope slides and one megalethoscope viewer. It is believed to be the largest collection of megalethoscope photographs in North America.

Lifelong Californian Earl Dible (1911-1989) practiced photography as a hobby and documented popular sites and scenes throughout the state and the American West in the 1940s. In 1993, his son donated his work to the California Museum of Photography.

Across its albums, stereographs, and albumen prints, the California Museum of Photography's collections include nearly seven hundred Francis Frith photographs. The majority of these photographs have inscriptions written on their recto (that is, the surface of the image), indicating an identification number and subject matter. These are similar to photographs collected by the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), where it is posited that the photographs were "most probably used as place-markers within [Frith & Co.]'s filing system, allowing for easy retrieval of stocks of unmounted prints."

The George Hoxie Collection is a group of photographs made in California in the 1940s. George Hoxie (United States, 1907-1984) was a photographer active in the Photographic Society of America as both a judge and entrant of its various salon photography competitions. From 1943-1948, Hoxie was the editor of Minicam magazine, an early precursor to Modern Photography. In the 1940s, Hoxie made several trips to California; the negatives he made during this trip comprise the George Hoxie Collection.

Glass negatives were the earliest common form of photographic negatives. This set of images is largely unattributed works, spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If you are particularly interested in glass negative collections, you may also enjoy browsing the Harry Pidgeon, Olindo Ceccarini, and Will Connell collections, also featured on this site.

Harry Pidgeon (United States, 1869-1954) was a sailor and photographer who was the second person to solo circumnavigate the globe in a sailboat. This collection represents a selection of Pidgeon's photographs of his travels. The entire collection comprises over 1500 glass negatives.

The Keystone-Mast Collection comprises over 350,000 stereoscopic photographs and negatives that depict the world between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Firms represented in Keystone-Mast include Keystone View Company, Underwood and Underwood, B.W. Kilburn, H.C. White Company, Universal Photo Art Company (C.H. Graves), American Stereoscopic Company, W.H. Rau, Berry, Kelley and Chadwick, and George Rose. The photographs are generally not stereo cards, but contact prints from the original negatives, annotated by Keystone staff and photographers.

Kusakabe Kimbei (1841–1934) was a prolific Japanese photographer, known for his hand-colored albumen prints of local people and scenes. The CMP owns approximately 150 photographs attributed to the artist.

A photochrom is a colorized image produced from a black-and-white photographic source. Using a chromolitographic process, the image is interpreted in color and reproduced photomechanically. This process was utilized in postcard printing, as well as small prints like those in the CMP's collection.

The Califorina Museum of Photography acquired its first postmortem photograph in the 1980s, and curated an exhibition of postmortem photography in 1989 ("Memento Mori"). The majority of the CMP's postmortem photographs are from the Steve and Mary DeGenaro postmortem and memorial photography collection, which was donated to the CMP between 2009 and 2011. The DeGenaros' gift was the focus of a 2014 exhibition ("But Not Forgotten").

The Robert Cleveland (United States, 1918-1991) negative collection contains 543 8x10 negatives and color transparencies. Robert Cleveland, a commercial architectural photographer working primarily in Southern California, photographed for a number of interior and exterior firms and publications in the 1950s and through the early 1960s. The majority of photographs document the trends in interior and exterior design focusing on particular elements such as appliances, hardware, and building materials. Buildings and sites represented in the collection are located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, and Utah.

Complementing the Keystone-Mast Collection, the California Museum of Photography has collected over ten thousand stereo cards, both by publishers included in Keystone-Mast, and by those that are not. A selection has been digitized here.

The California Museum of Photography holds a collection of approximately 250 photographs produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps during and immediately after World War II. A selection has been digitized here.

Will Connell (United States, 1898-1961) began his professional photographic career in the late 1920s in California. Connell photographed California industry during a time of growth and prosperity. Will Connell's career was that of artist, teacher, technician and entrepreneur. His work was published in Allyear Club, Touring Topics (later Westways), Better Homes and Gardens, Colliers Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Country Gentlemen, Life, Successful Farming, Sunset, Time, U.S. Camera, Woman's Day, Woman's Home Companion, and Vogue. The CMP's collection is comprised of approximately 15,000 negatives made between 1926 and 1952, with the majority made in the 1930s and 1940s.

William Amos Haines (United States, 1877-1953) produced panoramic photographs throughout the United States using a Cirkut 10 camera, which produced film 10 inches wide by up to several feet long. First based in Conneaut, Ohio, and later in Glendale, California, Haines photographed, printed, and often hand-colored his photographs himself. He marketed these photographs to schools, who could appreciate the large-scale photographs and educational subjects. The CMP has approximately 800 William Amos Haines negatives, which were a gift from the Western Photographic Collectors' Association, as well as over 100 vintage prints, many of which are hand-colored. A selection of these photographs and negatives have been digitized and are available online.